On These Planes,
In-Flight Service
Is Super-Secret

ANDREWS AIR FORCE BASE, Md. -- Senior Airman Amanda Fauci's job is so sensitive she has nearly the same security clearance as a Secret Service agent. She sometimes goes on weeks-long classified assignments.

But on a recent mission, the 23-year-old was struggling. Her Texas-shaped sugar cookies made from prepared dough "blew up," she says. She ended up making a new batch from scratch at home that night. The next day, she served them to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, former President George H.W. Bush and other VIPs aboard a Boeing 757 bound for College Station, Texas.

"There was a sense of panic there for a moment" when the initial batch flopped, says Airman Fauci, a five-year service veteran. Working on her time off is all part of "getting the mission done," she says.

The Air Force is looking for a few good men and women like Ms. Fauci: flight attendants who staff Air Force One and 16 other luxury planes that ferry government dignitaries around the globe.

It's not as easy finding recruits as one might think. The 150 members of the Andrews-based group and about 70 others stationed elsewhere -- all Air Force enlisted personnel, trained in survival skills, aircraft emergencies and the culinary arts -- take on duties that would make commercial flight attendants want to pull the rip cord.

For security and historical reasons, it's up to them to plan menus, buy food and supplies, prepare meals, load luggage into the cargo hold and then, dressed in understated navy suits, tend to powerful and demanding passengers on trips that can last weeks. Though they sometimes get luxury accommodations in exotic locales, they are on call around the clock and endure unpredictable schedules, 11-hour flights and overnighting in tents in Iraq -- not to mention vacuuming the aircraft cabins during fuel stops and washing many, many dishes.

"My friends say, 'I wouldn't do your job if they gave me a bonus,'" says Tech. Sgt. Allison Miller, a 10-year Air Force attendant. But the 15-year service veteran says she took the job to travel and figures, "I've seen the world twice."

The 89th Airlift Wing at Andrews spent the past six months on an unprecedented recruiting drive to lure enlisted men and women to volunteer for the job and, to a lesser extent, to attract pilots. When Air Force One and other planes in the iconic blue and white color scheme were on stops at Air Force bases around the country, the wing invited service members to come take a look. Frequent fliers Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Vice President Dick Cheney made video testimonials.

Despite the prestige the duty confers, the wing was having trouble finding the quantity and quality of candidates needed, and the right mix of ages and ranks to keep the operation from being top-heavy, says Maj. Kurt Kremser, a pilot who runs personnel in the wing. But the Air Force says the effort -- a large part of it simply making it known that such jobs exist -- is paying off: The service found enough attendants to fill spots in the year ended in September and is well on its way to filling openings for this fiscal year.

The Air Force attendants start at about the same pay -- around $40,000 a year -- as senior commercial attendants, but they can eventually earn considerably more. They also receive flight pay and per diems when traveling, and hazard pay for flights that go to places like Iraq and Afghanistan. For some, the goal is to be selected to fly exclusively on the two 747s that serve President Bush, although those duties don't bring extra pay.

Tech. Sgt. Christina Sheridan, 32, earns it by flying blind, deep in the belly of a C-17 cargo plane. She staffs one of two "silver bullets," Airstream-type trailers fitted out with communications suites, a compartment for the VIP and his or her aides, and lavatories. The trailers nestle inside the giant planes so no one knows a VIP is on board.

"Some places you wouldn't want a blue and white to go," she says cheerfully. "I spend a lot of time in Iraq, Bagram [Afghanistan] and Kabul. We do the same cooking but we serve on plastic instead of glass."

Staff Sgt. Jon Jackson recalls a trip where the "distinguished visitor," or DV, had approved a menu choice of steak or chicken for the entree. But the DV suddenly got a taste for salmon. So the plane radioed ahead and on a fuel stop in Ireland, attendants made a quick trip to procure salmon for 50 people. Sgt. Jackson, working with a tiny sink and a cutting board in the rear galley, did his best to fillet and cook the fish himself.

"Some things we can't do," says Tech. Sgt. Monique Townsend, who has spent seven of her 18 years in the service as an attendant. "You can't always get 50 pieces of mahi-mahi," she says. "But 'When are we going to eat?' are the first words out of their mouths. Food is No. 1."

ENLARGE

That was evident when Airman Fauci contacted the defense secretary's office to discuss meal preferences for the trip to College Station and back. Pulled-pork sandwiches won out over chicken fettuccini for lunch on the outbound leg. Buffalo chicken salad and steak fajita wraps, the options for the return flight, lost out to chicken Caesar salads.

The day before the flight, six attendants, including Airman Fauci, met at the Andrews base commissary at 8 a.m. in their green, one-piece flight suits to shop for supplies. They quickly filled six shopping carts with everything from frozen onion rings to premade potato salad, baked beans, chicken, grapes, romaine lettuce and the offending sugar-cookie dough. Ms. Fauci lingered over the maraschino cherries, trying to decide whether to buy ones with stems or without, for the Shirley Temple welcome drink she had planned. The tab came to about $500.

Back at squadron headquarters, the six unloaded the supplies in a big industrial kitchen and set to work. Master Sgt. Kenneth Jack, designated the main cook on the trip, browned off some sausage for breakfast burritos the crew would be served on the return leg, then placed chicken breasts in a foil pan. "I'm going to trim it up, season it and then grill it" for the Caesar salads, he says.

That night, while Ms. Fauci was decorating the new cookies with red, white and blue sprinkles, Sgt. Jack was at his house jazzing up the canned baked beans with a recipe he pulled off the Internet. "Everything is dressed up so it doesn't seem to come out of a can," explains Sgt. Jackson.

On the day of the flight, a nervous Ms. Fauci -- it was her first trip as lead attendant overseeing the other five and charged with personally serving the DV -- insisted they meet three hours before departure instead of the usual two. So at 9:15, the six, in their dressy flying uniforms unadorned by rank or ribbons, started loading the food, in boxes and coolers, into a van, and then onto the 757.

Airman Fauci, a diminutive blonde, was working in supply management on the flight line of an F-16 squadron in New Mexico two years ago. When she told her base commander she planned to leave the service at the end of her four-year stint and apply to be a flight attendant at Southwest Airlines, the officer put her in touch with the 89th Airlift Wing. Soon after she was selected, Ms. Fauci re-enlisted for four more years. She has traveled to foreign destinations ranging from Australia to Belgium, serving first lady Laura Bush and members of Congress.

When it came time to serve the new cookies on Secretary Gates's trip to College Station, the extra work paid off. They "were so much better," she says. And when the passengers noticed they were shaped like Texas, "they thought that was awesome."

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